My dirty life and times.

December 2011

December 29, 2011

In his most recent book Liberty Defined, libertarian Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul takes dead aim at Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms," the ideas that created the social foundation for the American compact on the edge of the great mid-century war against fascism and totalitarianism. Seventy years removed from that 1941 speech, Roosevelt's words may seem to some as gauzy as the Gettysburg Address did during the FDR's time, yet this passage from that speech - delivered 11 months before Pearl Harbor with the certain knowledge of the national peril ahead - reinstated in absolute terms the American commitment to her founding ideals, and the evolution of her place in the wider world:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

These were heady words for a man restocking the arsenal of democracy in order to fight and win a global war over both Atlantic and Pacific hegemony, a fight that brought the nation into its next stage of massive armament and its generational opposition to communism in general, and the Soviets in particular. Yet at the time, FDR's speech was also a political broadside - something of a killing blow, really - against the isolationists of the era, personified by Charles Lindbergh. The America First campaign attracted many anti-war liberals, particularly young intellectuals like Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal, but also socialist leaders like Norman Thomas. No matter that nativism and anti-Semitism fueled much of the isolationist movement, and filled halls for Lindbergh speeches, the left could join the nativist right in opposing military campaigning.

Roosevelt's Four Freedoms cut through the claptrap isolation-and-bigotry brew of the American Firsters like a scythe over amber waves of grain, and they established idealistic 20th century goals to be pursued by American policy-makers. Have we ever lived up to any of those Four Freedoms completely? No, we haven't (nor did Roosevelt). But many of those who believe in this notion of a democratic republic with strong communitarian values believe we should keep on trying. Ron Paul, on the other hand, fills his halls (at least partly) with those who reject that view and believe FDR's Four Freedoms were a radical cul de sac off the main highway of America's real national ethic: the acquisition and preservation of property.

Writes Paul in his book (h/t Daily Beast): “Any effort to mandate or enforce the goal of making everyone free from want and fear through government action will guarantee the destruction of the concept of personal liberty. Whether it’s local government or world government, and no matter the motivation, this effort can only destroy one’s right to life, liberty, and property.”

Notice the bastardization of the original American set of rights: the "pursuit of happiness" has become property. This mutant strain has been living in vitro in American public life since Roosevelt used the power of the Federal government to battle the Great Depression's, and extended its reach in modern life. The New Deal, the Great Society, Medicare, Social Security, the G.I. Bill, Federal aid to schools, the nation's highway system, the EPA, FEMA, Head Start, the Labor Department, and of course, national defense and the military, were all responses in their own ways to the embrace of a greater communitarian spirit embodied in the four freedoms.

The libertarian obsession with property rights is in direct conflict with the ideas of national unity that have linked the majority of Americans since 1941. Ron Paul may associate with some unsavory racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, anti-immigrant, gay bashing supporters and that association – best seen in 20 years' worth of newsletters he claims not to have written nor edited nor approved – is both offensive and disqualifying to a candidate of a major American political party.

Yet their offensive character, is really just a sideshow to the ideological threat that the rise of Ron Paul represents. The linking of so many liberals and civil libertarians on the left with either tepid or bold support for Ron Paul signals an abandonment of those communitarian ideals in favor of a very narrow reading of American destiny. Weary of war, of corporate warcraft, of heightened state security, and battered its by the malfeasance of deregulated financial monsters, many liberals understandably feel their hearts skip a beat when they flip on the latest Republican televised debate and hear the isolationist Congressman from Texas rail against the military-industrial complex and the Federal Reserve.

Yet this is just the candy that a predator uses to lure his unsuspecting victim into the back seat of his car. If the left joins this right, our future is a wasteland. The path that Ron Paul represents, should he be elected president of the United States, leads to what is rightfully described a Somalian in in nature. For there, removed from the community of nations, lies the ultimate libertarian state. It is a place where property is valued more highly than the lives of the people who inhabit the land, and where property is protected by force of arms and the freedom to use a weapon. There is no social safety net. There is no national economic system. There is no reserve bank. There is no healthcare, no education, no welfare, no collective bargaining, no interstate highway system, no truly national defense. As David Atkins writes in Hullabaloo:

This, by the way, is why racism, theocracy and libertarianism go hand in hand, when from a philosophical point of view they should have little to do with one another. The negative effects of the lack of a central government are so obvious in developing countries that wherever the social order fails as in Somalia, it must have been due to bad religion, or the defect of having been born to an inferior race. Ron Paul fans must reassure themselves that such things would never happen to white, Christian folk. They're immune from the Somali problem by virtue being of different stock and different values, you see.

In a post on the Naked Capitalism blog, Matt Stoller describes model modern liberalism as comprising two distinct – and as he hints, equal – elements: a central Federal government that protects the rights of individuals and provides a social safety net, and opposition to warfare. I suggest that while both of these elements are indeed found in modern liberalism, in any left or center-left voting pool in the United States, that they are far from equal. The largest strain of U.S. liberalism is rooted in domestic communitarian values and economic self-interest for the majority of the working public. Opposition to military adventurism and to what some progressives call American Empire comprises a strong, often loud, highly principled, and righteous strain of the liberal polity. Long may it hold sway in primary campaigns, and warn American politicians of the limits of a democratic republics hegemony.

Yet it is a mistake to place what Stoller called "distrust of centralized authority" on the same level as the concern for economic well-being and domestic civil rights. Economics always comes first. This may be ungenerous, this may not be the highest ideal of a great nation, this may mean the pale watering down of one of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, but it is also the truth. We should all oppose our sad and unethical drone warfare and the erosion of civil liberties in the era of military adventurism and anti-terrorism "security" apparatus expansion. But we also need to realize that Ron Paul opposes these and other excesses not because they're wrong, but because they're paid for by a strong Federal government he seeks to abolish - the same elected government that guarantees our liberty, regulates commerce, and provides some measure of social safety net.

I am a liberal, more of a social democrat actually, as I grow older. There may be some phrases and ideals embedded in the tumor that is libertarianism, but I trust neither Paul's judgment nor his ethics. He would lead us backwards, and abandon many of the freedoms in this hard land of ours that organizers and advocates have fought so hard to attain. The dalliance with Ron Paul that so many liberals, center-lefties and civil libertarians seem to be engaging in during this Republican preseason, does not seem - if I may be frank - to be intellectually rigorous. Too many war-weary liberals seem happy to waive the rest of their communitarian views - and with them, their responsibility to work for reform. Roy Edroso cannily knocks that chip off the liberal shoulder with a post on Paul's libertarian cronies and their real ideas about "freedom" on the American scene:

These guys can always work together, because they all came out of the same Big Bang of hatred for the New Deal and its legacy: Big Government and the coalition that sustains it -- blacks, gays, unionized workers, women, et alia. Each conservative tribe has its own relationship to that legacy -- some of them (the more intelligent ones, generally) are deeply cynical, and some are as sincere as any schizophrenic street preacher. But all of them deeply hate that a bunch of minorities have coalesced to get something that they think belongs by right to them and people like them, and many of them have learned that it would be more effective (and, these days, more popular) to strike at the state that enables that coalition than at the minorities themselves.

What mania, particularly, animated Paul's newsletter stories of criminal-natured blacks and AIDS-drama-queen gays doesn't matter to me. I know that he's a Republican Libertarian and, having been born earlier than yesterday, that is enough for me.

UPDATE: Maha Barbara perfectly captures a central objection to the hard-core libertarianism (and its close connection to social bigotry) with this passage from her excellent post on the choices Ron Paul presents for liberals:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — modern libertarianism was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. That’s when President Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce desegregation of the schools and protect nine African-American students from being torn apart by a howling mob for attempting to enter a school.

Ever since those years, white racists have embraced the argument that only the authority of the federal government is oppressive. Whatever the state does, is OK. The philosophical basis of this argument is that state governments are closer to the people and therefore more responsive to them.

Read the whole post - it's quite good and responds directly to Paul promoters who are ostensibly on the left, like Glenn Greenwald. Scott Lemieux also finds the links to key portions of Paulism that should offend any progressive:

It’s wrong to think of Ron Paul’s racism and his libertarianism as two distinct parts of his political persona, when in fact they are deeply tied together. White supremacists understand what Glenn, apparently, does not; the absence of Federal authority makes it easier for private actors and local governments to repress the civil and political rights of minorities.

Exactly. And frankly, the most frustrating aspect to Greenwald's angry scorn for Obama - and for liberals who dare to disagree with his pure civil libertarianism - is his frequent descent into trying to divine the hidden motivations of progressives who don't see things his way. His common use of ridiculously divisive language - derivations of "coward" make daily appearances in his work - serve to put off and ultimately disengage the very polity he's trying to convince from the very issues upon which we might all agree. Engaging Greenwald on the merits is far more interesting than dealing with his latest flame war (I for one, remain glad that Greenwald's out there making the arguments that he makes), as Tom Hilton did so well last week, when he pointed out the flaws inherent in the natural attraction to Paul's anti-war views:

...the nature of his anti-war stance is fundamentally different from that of liberal opposition to any given war. The tipoff is in his opposition to foreign aid, and his anti-United Nations position: he's anti-war because the rest of the world just isn't worth it. His is not the pacifism of the anti-war movement but the nativist isolationism of the America-Firsters; Paul is "to the left of Obama" the way Lindbergh was to the left of Roosevelt. (That may be true in a fairly literal sense, although I wouldn't trust anything from Big Government without further corroboration.)

Similarly, Paul's positions on civil liberties issues aren't actually about civil liberties as we understand them; they're about his opposition to Federal authority. (An opposition that is somewhat conditional, it should be noted.) For example, in talking about the death penalty, he makes clear that he opposes it only at the Federal level. His opposition to the PATRIOT Act, the War on Drugs, and domestic surveillance come from the same root as his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. He has no real objection to states violating the rights of their citizens; it's only a problem if the Feds do it.

That natural attraction to Paul's language among liberals weary of war and the constant intrusion of "security" on our lives in the long decade after 9/11 is well-defended by Levi Asher, in his response to my post here. Here's the toughest part:

...nowhere in Tom Watson's appraisal does he show that he takes pacifism seriously, or that he sees any momentum towards worldwide adoption of an antiwar agenda. In fact, the peace platform is a platform that never rests, and there is always momentum in the world towards pacifism. The popularity of Ron Paul is one indication of the dynamic nature of antiwar politics, and the great Occupy movement that began on Wall Street (which is solidly and blessedly antiwar) is another indication.

Doesn't Tom Watson hear the chimes of peace? Instead, his article seems rooted in nostalgic "good war" imagery, with enough World War II references for a Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg movie. Watson mentions "the great mid-century war against fascism and totalitarianism" ... "11 months before Pearl Harbor with the certain knowledge of the national peril ahead" ... "a man restocking the arsenal of democracy in order to fight and win a global war over both Atlantic and Pacific hegemony". But these allusions to World War II are stale and inappropriate. Many recent history books like Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization by Nicholson Baker and Breaking Open Japan by George Feifer have pointed out the many ways that our understanding of the motivations behind World War II has hardened into cliche, and led us to believe too easily that World War II was a "good war". This causes us to forget the larger truth that there is no such thing as a good war.

I've observed in these pages before that pacifism is a lonely position. It's lonely in the Democratic party and it's lonely in the Republican party. Ron Paul has helped to make pacifists a little less lonely in 2011, and that's why I'd rather praise him than bemoan his flaws. Next, maybe we can forget about Ron Paul and find a new Republican or Democratic or no-party presidential candidate with an antiwar platform ...who isn't unelectable for one reason or another. Then maybe we can finally get some changes made.

Levi puts me in the right intellectual vise: yeah, I'm not a pacifist. Though I would argue that I do take that point of view seriously and favor the stripping away of the American security state that has changed our society by force force of fear and corporate profit in the last decade. But I'm just not willing to barter the civil liberties that our representative democracy and an activist Union guarantee after centuries of struggle to pay for it. That's a trade I'm not willing to make. And to me, that's the trade that Ron Paul represents.

December 14, 2011

For all the splashy immersion in code, data, platforms, and techniques that generally soaks the discussions and analysis of the democracy and civil rights movements among the digerati, it was striking how little technology asserted itself Monday night at Personal Democracy Media’s “instant” conference on Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party organizing at New York University.

While the network itself was at the center of the rangy panel discussion, there was little on Facebook and Twitter, text messaging and video platforms from those on the stage, and not much from the audience either. This was surprising in some ways, because from where I sat, the 10th floor of the Kimmel Center was basically Geek Central, East Coast Chapter, convened by Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej.

Yet the web seemed almost a side player, a stipulated tool in the hands of craftspeople making something shinier and more valuable. To some, it was the network itself, with a perfect circle of actor/activists signaling the highest purpose of our digital connections. This is a standard point of view among those convinced that social networks and the digital ties that bind necessarily offer a brighter future for democracy and the public commons.

But there was another factor in last night’s discussion of how Occupy and the Tea Party captured hearts and minds and moving feet that clearly rivaled the network and its much-studied effect: human empathy.

To my ear, speaker after speaker stressed the appeal of an empathetic connection within organizing groups to challenge the powers that be.

“Communities and networks are becoming communities of care–we care for each other space,” said grassroots organizer Marianne Manilov, co-founder and co-director of The Engage Network. She said much of the success of Occupy’s core group of organizers came from their collective realization that in today’s society, “there's no one coming for us." Pulling together into “small circles of trust “ isn’t a technique – it’s a necessity, she said. “People are coming together and they’re re-knitting the broken fabric of our broken communities by standing together.”

Jessica Shearer, executive director of SEIU ‘s Healthcare Education Project and a veteran political organizer, talked with disarming directness about organized labor’s lack of the human touch. She told of fleeing the scene of domestic violence as a child, and how her mother had called the union for help. “No response. Not a single word. Not ever. In desperation she turned to the evangelical church. By nightfall we had a place to stay and a turkey stew.”

Shearer said that big unions like SEIU struggle to reach people in real ways, and really empower their members. “Everywhere unions stagnate, we shrink. Unions fall victim to our own scale and sophistication. We know that Occupy is important but we’re still learning our lesson.”

She contrasted organized labor’s response to the Tea Party and said that while unions were altogether smarter and more sophisticated with their “large professional call centers and mass mailings,” the truth was that “the Tea Party, you” – turning to California Tea Party Patriots founder Mark Meckler, who sat next to her on the dais – “kicked our butts.”

Shearer talked about the October 5 march in New York, when organized labor first endorsed Occupy Wall Street and swelled its numbers to more than 12,000 marchers (including me). A month later on November 17, the crowd grew to more than 30,000 people including major union leaders. But she pointed out that those numbers, while large for the Occupy movement, are tiny compared to the millions of potential boots on the ground. What’s lacking still, Shearer asserted, is the visceral connection to people, to members, to workers who might want to organize: “Labor is on the edge of a cliff. What we lack -- what we feel we can no longer afford -- is human scale outreach.”

The crowds in Tahrir Square in Cairo just might have the opposite problem, according to social analyst Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina, who has spent time with the networked revolutionaries and written about freedom movements on her technosociology blog. The Egyptian freedom activists gravitated toward the rewarding and now-familiar human interaction at Tahrir, missing their moment in the recent elections. Tufekci scratched a bit at the sacred hide of “the network” during her talk, worrying aloud that small groups of organizers can fall in love, in essence, with organizing itself and their own perfectly-formed (and basically closed) circles, while ignoring models like the U.S. civil rights movement which, led by goal-oriented visionaries, plunged ruthlessly on in pursuit of legal and societal change – and succeeded. Yet she couldn’t help but tell the wonderful tale of the Twitter-powered creation of ad hoc field hospitals in Cairo to treat the hundreds of casualties from the clashes with authorities.

But the three organizers who ran the field hospital creation network weren’t faceless drones in a network in which each member is an exact equal. They were leaders – just as there are leaders of the Occupy movement and the Tea Party, whether they accept those monikers or not. Some of it is indeed based on hubs of information and sharing data. Author and NYU professor Clay Shirky remarked (correctly in my view) that “the person who collates information often becomes the go-to person.” And despite being the only self-identified Tea Party member in the room, Mark Meckler elicited a sea of nodding liberal heads when he said that these movements “are not leaderless, they’re ‘leaderfull.’”

Meckler painted a different painting of Tea Party organizing than is generally accepted by progressive critics – one that reflects both a sharing ethic among organizers and a lack of support from the big institutions (the national GOP, Fox News, and the Koch Brothers made their appearances in discussion and on the Twitter feed for the event). His description closely aligned with the vision of Ori Brafman, co-author, The Starfish and the Spider – the concept of “emergence” and the bubbling up of movements from “starfish” organizations that regenerate their myriad parts and adapt. In a digitally networked world, asserted Brafman, “this is going to be the platform for activism going forward.” In Brafman’s “small circles of trust” the technology drops away.

Occupy organizer Beka Economopolous brought the broad sociological concepts down from 30,000 feet to the pavement in Zuccotti Park. “What's great about OWS is that it gets people out of their houses and off their computers,” she said. Occupy has a strong sense of its own dramatic presence to the left – “we stage defiance and sacrifice and that captures people's imaginations.” And at some level, it’s about “touching people's hearts and fulfilling peoples needs.”

Shirky had the take-away question in my view: at what point, if ever, does Occupy “go all the way” in altering our relationship with government? Or better stated, in a democratic republic, when does it change government – since we have no relationship in theory.

The answer’s unclear, of course. Yet it was heartening to me to hear Shearer’s account on the burgeoning impact of Occupy on organized labor. It’s not quite that the Occupiers are standing over an operating room gurney, charging a couple of electronic paddles, and yelling “clear!” Maybe it’s closer to an ice cold Gatorade to a long distance runner. But I had to agree with her conclusion:

“Occupy Wall Street is not an alternative to real organizing – it is real organizing.”

December 11, 2011

Lyndon Johnson's journey from the political precincts of segregated rural Texas to the moment in 1965 when he told the American nation "we shall overcome" was a long one, yet the great moments of advances in freedom are best seen in the changes, in the evolution of thinking. The long struggle for equality in sexual orientation doesn't hold the same century-long existential question for the country as a whole, but it has nonetheless been an accelerating freight train of social change in the last decade, a welcome success in the process of smoothing of the rougher, unfair, immoral edges of our society. And the fragrant, flowering success of the gay and lesbian rights movement has given us all proof in dark challenging times that there still exists a willingness in the American spirit to rethink ourselves, to stride into the future with purpose, and to pursue a more perfect union.

And last week, the Obama Administration provided its LBJ speech in that long struggle - and signaled its evolving commitment to linking gay rights to its wider human rights agenda. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, herself a non-supporter (yet) of full gay marriage and a one-time supporter of the Clinton White House Defense of Marriage Act, threw both her not inconsiderable personal international stardom and the full weight of U.S. foreign policy behind supporting equality for homosexuals - and more importantly, condemning those nations who turn a blind eye to anti-gay violence.

Against the backdrop of the ongoing Republican reality show mess that passes for that sad, obstructionist party's nomination process, the speech didn't get the domestic media play it deserved. Yet it marked a high point of the Obama Administration, and showed the keen coordination that has become the extraordinary relationship between President Obama and Secretary Clinton, formerly bitter rivals. Speaking at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Clinton formally declared the fight against discrimination against homosexuals a key priority of U.S. foreign policy.

"Today, I want to talk about the work we have left to do to protect one group of people whose human rights are still denied in too many parts of the world today," she said. "In many ways, they are an invisible minority."

Then she took dead aim:

“Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights. It is a violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished.”

In a word: bravo! It's hard to beat the reaction of Dan Savage (with his implicit political message) in HuffPo: "The check I was planning to write to Obama's reelection campaign just acquired another zero."

I particularly value the connection of social justice issues to human rights language. It’s a powerful statement. This language and the leverage of American diplomatic efforts are vitally important, they give the issue visibility and legitimacy. I particularly appreciated Secretary Clinton’s call for the freedom of expression. She said,

“It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave.”'

Pandit rightly pointed out that U.S. domestic policy still has a ways to go before both anti-gay violence and discrimination disappear from these shores, politely emphasizing the Obama Administration's own slow boat evolution. Yet radio host and gay rights activist Sandip Roy saw a clear lack of hypocritical nagging in Secretary Clinton's landmark speech.

But the most interesting (and un-American) part of the speech was that she didn't use her speech to set up the United States as any kind of beacon for human rights or get on a moral high horse. She acknowledged that the American record was "far from perfect." She didn't use her bully pulpit to just trumpet the Obama administration's own record -- for example, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

She actually looked abroad for inspiration -- to South Africa, Colombia, Mongolia, and India:

"To highlight one example, the Delhi High Court decriminalised homosexuality in India two years ago, writing, and I quote, 'If there is one tenet that can be said to be an underlying theme of the Indian constitution, it is inclusiveness.'"

That's noteworthy. When foreign leaders decide they need to acknowledge inspiration from India in a speech, they don't usually look to the Delhi High Court. Their speechwriters do a quick search on "Famous Quotes from Mahatma Gandhi" instead.

Secretary Clinton's address in Geneva was strong, dramatic and historic. But it was also given more import with the release of a White House memorandum over President Obama's signature that explicitly ties the U.S. emphasis on human rights to gay rights in our foreign policy. While American foreign policy in general in far from a perfect expression of freedom and civil rights, this is a time for applause and good feeling. Compare Secretary Clinton's address and the sickening, gay-baiting pseudo-Christian political ad released this week by former GOP frontrunner Rick Perry and you'll glimpse the vast contrast between the team we have - and their potential successors. As Leslie Gabel-Brett of Lambda Legal said: "A vision of equality and human rights for LGBT people has taken hold, and the number and power of those who promote that vision is growing. It may be a heavy boulder up a steep hill, but many people are pushing history toward the full recognition of LGBT human rights under the law at home and around the world."

December 09, 2011

When Sandy Alderson, speaking as the newly-arrived Moneyball guru of the New York Mets, openly mocked All-Star shortstop José Reyes with a line about sending the free-agent a box of chocolates to show himhim he was loved, he signaled that the Mets future was a lot dimmer than it has been for decades. Alderson, it seems, got the job to run the Mets in order to disassemble the other major-league team in baseball's largest market. A year ago, Alderson promised Mets fans that the budget for the team would closely resemble (with a few cuts) what it has been for the last few years. He claimed that the Madoff scandal affecting Fred and Jeff Wilpon and their partner sol Katz the ownership group of the New York Mets would not change baseball operations in a significant manner.

He was not telling the truth.

Thus under Alderson's orders the Mets made no offer to one of the top homegrown star players in the team's 50 year history.

In the last 10 years no Mets player has been as bright a spark on the field as José Reyes. Signed by the Mets at age 17 out of the Dominican Republic, Reyes has been the rare baseball talent who publicly delights in playing the game at its highest level. The long triple. That cannon arm from deep in the hole. The race down the first base line on a dribbler past the pitcher. The sprint to short center field to grab a pop-up. The spark, the smile, the crazy hand gestures. The flying dreadlocks and sheer exuberance, and the love of baseball. All gone to Miami.

The Mets never made an offer to Jose Reyes, the greatest shortstop in the history of the franchise. And on the National League side of town, the Wilpons now own a small market baseball team in a new with no hope of competing and a quickly dwindling fan base. Here in Casa Watson the generation of fans that I usually take to the ballgames has informed me in no uncertain terms that they do not wish to visit Citi Field on a regular basis in 2012. They perceive that the business entity known as the New York Mets does not care about retaining their business, that it does not care about their brand, that chooses not to compete for the entertainment dollar in New York area. But mostly, they are sad. They will miss their favorite player. And they realize that the team they call their own simply did not want one of its greatest homegrown stars back. And they know that the team across town would never let one of its star attractions get away.

This is New York Mets baseball. In 2012, the team will celebrate 50 years. But how closely will these Mets resemble the initial team of 1962 in the loss column, only without the lovability, without Casey Stengel, without the sheer joy of beingthe upstart New York National League baseball club. Somewhere Dick Young is applauding Sandy Alderson, and slapping his buddy M. Donald Grant on the back.

My Dirty Life & Times

Tom Watson is a journalist, author, media critic, entrepreneur and consultant who has worked at the confluence of media technology and social change for more than 20 years. This long-running blog is my personal outlet - an idiosyncratic view of the world. "My dirty life and times" is a nod to the late, great Warren Zevon because some days I feel like my shadow's casting me.